Kael Dravon knew this was the end.
He walked a few more steps before his leg buckled and he went down hard on one knee. His body was growing colder by the second. The darkness at the edges of his vision wasn't going anywhere.
The rain was doing him a favor though.
It washed the blood off his hands fast enough that he could track which wounds were still open. Three cuts on the left arm, two deep. The hole in his side — that one he'd stopped thinking about because thinking about it didn't help. The bullet was still in there, sitting against the third rib, and it had decided to stay.
Kael pressed his back against the warehouse wall and listened.
Footsteps. Radios. The organized sweep pattern of professionals who had done this before. He counted the intervals between transmissions and put the number at twenty-two men still moving. Maybe more staged at the perimeter.
One hundred and fourteen. That's how many assassins they sent.
Thirty had fallen to his pistol before his leg gave out on the Sallow Street fire escape. Another thirty-three had been butchered by the heavy axe he'd reclaimed from a triad enforcer. And twenty-nine... twenty-nine had been taken by Marcus.
Marcus.
The name sat in his chest like a second bullet, hotter and more poisonous than the lead. Marcus Voss. His right hand. His oldest soldier. Only minutes ago, Kael had watched him fall. He remembered the spray of red as two assassins closed the distance. Kael had held his gun with a trembling hand, barking a roar of defiance as he took them both out with point-blank headshots. But in the chaos, a third shooter had found a mark.
The impact had slammed Kael against the wall. "FUCK!" he had spat, the world tilting on its axis.
Now, he could hear the remaining ninteen closing in. He still had the combat knife tucked into his boot. He still had one functional arm. He could make them pay a blood tax for his life.
But.
His legs had already made the decision for him. They weren't responding. The blood was coming too fast and the cold was coming faster and somewhere in the back of his mind — the part he never listened to, the part he had spent nine years training himself to ignore — a thought surfaced that he had never once let himself think before:
You could have been more than this.
Not more powerful. Just — more.
He had built an empire in under a decade, climbed the hierarchy from nothing, became one of the youngest men to ever consolidate Jade City under one name. His rivals had hated him for it. Some had feared him. Most had simply waited for the moment he showed a weakness.
But what he hated most — what was eating at him now as the rain hammered the cobblestones and his body slowly shut down — was that he hadn't seen it coming. No one outside his inner circle had known he was coming to this location tonight. Which meant the leak was internal. Someone in his own organization had put a target on his back and sold the coordinates.
Someone close.
He didn't have enough time left to figure out who.
Kael had no strength left. He laid back against the cold stone, rain falling straight down on his face, and for the first time in nine years he didn't try to plan his way out of it. There is a saying — that in the last few minutes of your life, everything flashes in front of you. He'd always dismissed it as something weak people told themselves.
Turned out it was true.
It wasn't dramatic. No music, no slow motion. Just — images. The Shatter Ward at fourteen. The first time he'd held real money in his hands. The first time someone had looked at him with genuine fear instead of pity. The wars. The victories. The faces of people he hadn't thought about in years.
All of it going past like he was watching it happen to someone else.
Kael Dravon closed his eyes in a gutter in the Rotgut District.
March 11th, 2024. Kael Dravon — the Red Devil of Jade City — died a pathetic death in the drain.
The peace of the void was shockingly brief.
"His fingers are moving! Someone, bring the doctor!"
The voice was shrill, female, and entirely too loud. Kael's eyes snapped open, but the world was a blur of aggressive light.
Ceiling. Cracked, yellowing paint. A fluorescent light fixture with a persistent, maddening flicker on the left side.
The smell hit him like a physical blow—antiseptic, wilting flowers, and the heavy, starchy scent of industrial cafeteria food. His body felt... wrong. It was light. Weightless. It felt like his soul had been stuffed into a suit three sizes too small.
He forced himself to sit up. The movement was too easy; there was no resistance from his muscles, no agonizing scream from his ribs.
He stared at his arms. Both of them were there. He stared at his left forearm for three full seconds, waiting for the scars. There was no mark from the Copper Gate war. No black ink from the Shatter Ward tattoo he'd gotten at sixteen to mark his first kill. The skin was smooth. Pale. Young. This was the arm of someone who had never held a weapon, let alone a city.
Panic—a sensation he hadn't felt in a decade—began to rise. He swung his legs over the bed. The floor came up faster than he expected; his legs were shorter, his reach diminished.
"You shouldn't be walking! You just woke from a ten-day coma!" a nurse cried, rushing toward him with a clipboard.
Kael didn't even look at her. He didn't hear her. He ignored her outstretched hand and lurched toward the small, grime-streaked mirror bolted above the sink.
He stopped.
The reflection looking back wasn't Kael Dravon. The hair was a flat, dull black instead of his trademark crimson. The eyes were dark and wide, set into a face with sharp, unfamiliar cheekbones. He looked eighteen, maybe younger. A boy. A stranger.
He stared at it for a long moment.
Then he looked down at the medical bracelet on the stranger's wrist.
Patient: Ren Ashvale
Date: March 11th, 2026
His hands went completely still.
2026.
Two years since he had bled out in the rain.
11th March 2026, Kael Dravon returned back to life as a High Schooler.